A MESSAGE TO YOU

Give or take Hot Chocolate, well ahead of Hi-Tension et al, Cymande were the first black British band of note. With influences ranging from soul, funk, and reggae to blues-rock, jazz and calypso, they were big in the States but failed to capitalise on early success. A staple for sampladelic hip-hoppers, they are finally getting their due with a brand new documentary. Cymande says: Lois Wilson

- Lois Wilson

Originally from Guyana, Jamaica and Saint Vincent, but calling south London home, Cymande created a lodestar for 70s black Britishness. With producer John Schroeder, they fed their Afrocentric aesthetic through their melting pot of influences: soul, funk, blues-rock, reggae, jazz, calypso to soundtrack their experience with tracks such as The Message, Bra, Dove and Zion I. Largely ignored in the UK, in the US they were playing 30,000 seaters in support of AI Green but after three albums - 1972's Cymande, 1973's Second Time Round and 1974's Promised Heights - they split, with founding members Steve Scipio and Patrick Patterson going on to retrain as lawyers. As time passed, the group's status grew, however, and co-opted by the hip-hop community, they've become a constant source for loops and breaks with everyone from The Fugees to Wu-Tang Clan utilising their work.

Fifty years on from their initial split, their story is finally being told on screen in Tim Mackenzie-Smith's excellent documentary, Getting It Back: The Story Of Cymande. A 2024 tour is also planned, where they will be playing Australia for the first time and new music promised.

"It feels good to be back and appreciated," bassist Steve Scipio tells Record Collector over a joint zoom with guitarist Patrick Patterson. "Especially in the UK. It's like we are finally being heard."

The seeds of the Cymande project were sown by Patterson and Scipio. Patterson and his family came to the UK from Guyana when he was just eight in 1958. Scipio and his family, also from Guyana, arrived in the UK in 1963, aged 13. Living on the same street in Balham, south London, they struck up a friendship, bonding over a shared culture and music. Scipio loved jazz and calypso, Patterson loved Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin and they both lapped up the soul music of the time.